When using jAlbum you should feel that you're in full control of how your images are managed. Some software titles that handle images give me gray hair! This is because I don't know what they are doing to my images - some just start indexing my hard-drive collecting all the images. Hey, I didn't ask for that! Others copy my images to some unknown location and soon my whole disk is completely fragmented with images all over the place. With jAlbum you get the choice to work with images your way.

Enabling the alternatives

Before continuing, open jAlbum preferences and switch to the "Album" tab. Now ensure that the "When adding files" setting is set to "Ask". This will make jAlbum pop up a dialogue window when adding files so you can decide on how to work with those files.

Makes copies by defaultjAlbum defaults to copying the images you add to a project folder located under a "My Albums" folder (the location for this folder can be set under Preferences). This has the advantage of creating "self contained" album projects. That means that they don't rely on where your original images are located and deleting images within jAlbum doesn't affect any files outside of your album project. This is what most users expect, but there are more ways.

Work directly on existing imagesLet's say that you don't like copies to be created for sake of disk usage, or that you already have a huge folder structure of images that you wish your album project to "mirror", so that changes, like rearranging folders and adding images outside of jAlbum automatically makes it into the final album on the next album build. In that case you should drop an image folder onto an empty project window and use the "Use folder" method. jAlbum will now move into that folder and use it as its "image directory" (its image source). Any change to the contents of that folder, or its sub-folders will show inside your new album project and vice versa: Any change you make to images (moving, deleting, renaming) within jAlbum will affect the real files under this folder. This way of working enables you to use jAlbum as a file manager for your existing images. You just need to hit "Make album" to have your web album updated. (To manage custom file ordering and metadata like captions and ratings, jAlbum keeps a couple of support files and a ".jalbum" folder under the "image directory". Don't use this option if you're concerned about not having these support files added to your existing image directory.)

Work with linksThis option strikes a middle way between copying files and "Use folder". A project folder is created under the "My Albums" folder, but it is filled with links to the images you add instead of being filled with copies. This has the advantage of saving disk space and keeping jAlbum stuff separated from your existing files. Links are simply references to the original location of the images you add, so jAlbum will rely on them being present.

Please refer to this table for a better understanding on the effects of these options:

Comparison

Copy

(default)

Link

Use folder

Adding picture(s)

a copy is created in the project's folder

will link to the original image

–

Adding a folder

folder and contents is copied

a link to folder is created

will use the whole folder as is

Self conatined (everything is in a single folder that you can carry / backup)

yes

no

yes

Disk use

2x

1x

1x

Deleting a file in jAlbum

deletes the copy

no effect on source files

deletes the original

Renaming a file in jAlbum

renames the copy

renames only the link

renames the original file

jAlbum support files added in source folder

no

no

yes

After changing the original (e.g. in Lightroom)

you’ll have to add the picture again(you’ll lose the comment)

processed automatically in the next “Make”

processed automatically in the next “Make”

Same file in multiple albums

yes, new copy will be created every time

yes, using the same source image

no

Using the OS’s file manager to organize albums

yes, but only the copy

no, might break links either

yes

Keyboard shortcutsYou can use combinations of the SHIFT, ALT and CTRL keys as you drag folders and images onto jAlbum to automatically trigger a "Use folder", "Copy" or "Link" behavior. You can observe the mouse arrow to know what behavior will be triggered. (Mac users use combinations of SHIFT, ALT and CMD instead).

More readingI hope this blog post has explained the pros and cons of the different ways jAlbum can handle images. Now you probably have enough information to make use of jAlbum in the way that suits you best. For more reading, please see this blog post.

Add your comment

@Slaid99, Yes there is. It's probably jAlbum's widget injection code that triggers this. If you don't need widgets in your album, you can switch off widget support altogether under Settings->Advanced->Metadata, then make and upload the album again.

I just noticed with Jalbum 13.1 that when I go between my photos in the album, every single time it has a message "waiting for Jalbum.net" even though my photos are all local. Is there someway of stopping that? (it's very quick, but is unnecessary)

@Dennis, the linking options under Album settings->Pages has nothing to do with the copy vs link options in this blog post. This blog post is about how jAlbum gets hold of original images (either via copies or links). The linking options under album settings->Pages is controlling how the final album gets hold of the images. If you select "Link to originals" and "Copy originals", then jAlbum makes a copy of the images it has found and puts the copies under the "album" folder. jAlbum then links the thumbnails directly to those images so clicking the thumbnails will take you directly to them.

@Claude, We surely can. First ensure that you're not using any characters in file names that aren't allowed for web use, like #, %, & an ?. If you still don't get images showing, please upload the album and pass a link to it in our user forum at http://jalbum.net/forum, there you get the fastest help for these kinds of issues.

After words when finishing building my albums, when I go to preview the album, I get all blank squares with an "x" at the corner where the images are suppose to be. Using ver 11.2 jalbum which I purchased.Also using win explorer 10 with windows 8 64 bitCan someone help me out please.

@stanwhite3, You're obviously using the online version of jAlbum. That one is very limited in many regards, multiple selection being one. Do give the full blown downloadable software a try. This said, I think we should implement multiple selection for the online version too.

I love Jalbum and use it often, however I have only one problem. Jalbum only allows me to rearrange one photo at a time. It would be awesome if we could select multiple images at once in order to move them.